thank you

All of you. I think this world is a wonderful, and not so terrifying place. For a while I’ve been trying to figure out which there is more of. For a while, I thought it was just terrifying. Everything I had known and everything that I had dreamed of every night and morning and day had just vanished, and I despised the world for it. I couldn’t stand looking at the sun because it hurt. It hurt knowing that I was looking at something so beautiful, yet I didn’t appreciate it at all. I dreaded the first day it felt like spring because it didn’t make me happy, I wanted the winter to last forever – and I hate the cold.

But as I’m typing this, I’ve realized I’ve come to the days of appreciating all the ripples in the pond and the silence of the air when the cars stop passing by, and I’m thinking of all you beautiful people. Thank you, so much. Thank you for letting me see beauty in everything when I only thought it could be seen with someone else. Thank you for showing me how great this place really is, and how much every little thing is worth.

Thank you for being here from the very beginning, thank you for staying with me through it all, and thank you so much for being here now. Every word you have said and act of love you’ve shown has made a difference; you changed my life. Thank you for reminding me how important family is, thank you for being my family and telling me I have no reason to thank you for that. Thank you for caring. Thank you for noticing in class when I wasn’t myself, for reaching out to me and reminding me why I’m here. Thank you for being such wonderful teammates, for running with me and pushing me, for asking if I’m okay and understanding when I wasn’t. You are all such different people who have made such an impact on my life, and I won’t ever forget that. Thank you for dragging me out of my room on a Saturday night to have fun and thanks so much for that beautiful note you slipped under my door. Thank you for coming over and playing your guitar and showing me that all guys aren’t that bad after all, thanks for just being around. Thank you for being my best friend for ten years and letting me call at any time. You’ve proved that some friendships are special enough to never fade. Thank you for showing no matter how much time passes you’ll always be here. Thank you for coffee dates and the reminder that we’re all a little crazy and more alike than we think. Thank you for feeling like home and being my second family, you always will be. Thank you for coming over at one a.m. and understanding me in a way not many people do, for somehow making the worst things in life really funny, and thank you for just being you and being here, you mean a lot to me. Thank you for the mornings you came over to sit on my floor and have coffee and say a lot or nothing at all, thanks for being the person I don’t have to say a lot with. Thank you for the little things, for the moments of singing at the tops of our lungs and laughing just because and thank you, so much, for showing me happiness again – your friendship means the world to me.

Thank you for reading these words at this very moment, that act alone says enough. This world is a big place with endless experiences and quick changes, and it can be so easy to get lost. But thank you for showing me that despite this huge world, we aren’t as small as we seem. I think it’s near impossible to be completely fearless, but it is very possible to become fearless in moments that you were once terrified. I think that, as Ms. Swift once said, being fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. And when the death-scaring moment happens, the day you realize that you’re still living, that you’re really living, is the one where, somehow, this world just starts to make a little more sense. So thank you, all of you, for bringing the realization that despite a heart can be broken by one, it can be so incredibly full by many.